America's Iliad

Some 60 odd Christmases ago, I opened one of the last presents of the morning, a present I had left toward the end because, from its shape,  under the tree, I could see it was plainly a book.  It was actually a "Giant Golden Book" a DeLuxe edition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. It had some very avante garde illustrations, and I had never heard of the story, and I flipped through it, asking my parents repeatedly, "What is this?" 

They simply shook their heads and said, "Read it. Find out."

I set it down and ran around playing with my toys and balls and the things a boy likes, but ultimately, collapsed in a heap, worn out enough to focus on a book and started reading this book by Jane Werner Watson, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen, and was soon swept up into a world of warriors and gods and goddesses who watched mere mortals on earth and intervened in the affairs of mortals to satisfy their own egos and passions. This was before "super heroes" with super powers were much in vogue, although there was Superman and Batman, but these gods were something else again. They could change form and they were vain and flawed and very intriguing.

The Iliad kept coming up, as it is apt to do, through the life of a boy and man. 

My second son was much enthralled by fantasy novels, full of super heroes and conflict and he loved Greek mythology.  He was, in some ways, an indifferent student in middle school, struggling to get good grades, but after he won a wrestling match, upsetting a champion (who later went on to wrestle varsity at Harvard) I found him sitting in his chair, recovering.  After he won his match, the rest of his team mates started winning their matches and we watched his team stage an astonishing and unexpected victory.  "It all started with you," I noted. 
He shrugged, "Even Achilles had his heel," he said.
"What?" 
"You know: He was their greatest hero, and when he was brought down, the battle turned."
After I picked up my jaw off my chest I asked him again, not believing this ten year old had just made an allusion to the Iliad.

Later, when he was in high school, I spoke with his English teacher. She was notoriously severe in her opinions of her students. This was Sidwell Friends School, where the sons and daughters of Washington's elite were coddled, but not by her.  He was admitted, in great measure, because he was by the time he was ready for freshman year in high school, quite a well known wrestler and the school made room occasionally for a "gold level" athlete, who might anchor a particular team, basketball, soccer, lacrosse.  
The faculty knew who these ringers were.
This English teacher asked who my son was and when I told her she smiled and said, "You know, he said something interesting in class the other day."  
She said this as if she did not expect any of her students to ever say anything interesting, "He said he thought Zeus was intimidated by his wife, Hera. He thought Zeus was a little afraid of her."
"Isn't that why Zeus assumed different forms?" I asked. "Leda and the swan and all that? He didn't want his wife to know about his extracurricular lovers?"
"But I don't expect a freshman in high school to have that sort of insight," she said. "You son reads with more insight than most kids his age."
"Well," I said. "He lives in that world more than most."
"How's that?" she asked.
"He's a wrestler. He steps on a mat and and it's combat. He knows about Achilles and about Paris versus Menelaus. He's been there. These stories are not outside his experience."
She looked at me for a moment and said, "Perhaps I ought to go down to the gymnasium and watch one of his matches some day."
"Have you ever seen a wrestling match?"
"Never. I don't ordinarily go to sporting events."
"You know, I saw quite a few of the St. Alban's  faculty at the St. Alban's tournament last week."
"Really?"
"Yes, but of course that's a boys' school. The faculty there know they have to see boys outside the classroom to really know them."
"Are you saying women faculty miss the boat with boy students?"
"I'm just saying the Iliad means something to boys because it speaks to a part of them."

Later, my older son was applying to Columbia and I flipped through the catalogue and noticed they started off every freshman reading the Iliad. Nearly all the faculty members at Columbia came from the same twelve universities and we kept hearing faculty saying with pride that the freshman of 2001 studied the same curriculum Calvin Trilling had studied. 
"The place is ossified," I told my son. "They're still teaching the Iliad."
"Well," he shrugged, "You have to study something."
He wound up at NYU, where he read the Iliad in a course entitled "Anger."
"Why would you read the Iliad for that?"
"Dad," he laughed, "There isn't much in the Iliad but anger." 
Oh, what a rube his father was.

Now, when I consider our most recent election and the conflict and the outcome, I think of the Iliad and I realize, anger, conflict, the gods and the heroes and the fools are nothing new. My sons have, at the very least, taught me as much.